Lament of Forgetfulness

So, I have realized through the years that I am a very forgetful person. Not that I am too terribly absent-minded per se, but I forget things in the past. I guess that would be long-term memory impairment.

Anyway, I have always been jealous of my brother Nate for his awesome memory of things that have happened in the past. He can seriously remember things from when he was like 3 years old. At least, he says he can and I'm inclined to believe him.

I, on the other hand, forget things very easily. A particular sense of frustration is that I forget books that I have read. I really like to read and I read a lot, but it is frustrating because I forget the books, especially if I read them quickly. I can usually remember a few scenes very clearly (usually rather unimportant ones, sadly), but the rest of the book is gone. I'm sure it's all in there somewhere, but I can never seem to dig it up.

I suppose this would be a good characteristic if was a poor child back in the day who only owned about 5 books and could get renewed delight out of them every time she read them, but since I live now and have tons of resources at hand (e.g. BYU library, internet) it would be so much nicer to be able to remember everything I read and be able to keep reading new books and remember everything in them too.

My one consolation in having to read books more than once if I want to remember them are the following quotes by C. S. Lewis that Elder Callister quoted in his devotional talk, "Your Refined Heavenly Home":

An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only.

I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years.

The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers “I’ve read it already” to be a conclusive argument against reading a work. . . . Those who read great works, on the other hand, will read the same work ten, twenty or thirty times during the course of their life.

Anyway, it's an awesome talk and you all should read it.

So, I guess it is good to read the books again, but what am I to do about all the other things I forget? You can't relive life. Alas and alack. I guess journal writing helps. Then I can just reread that. :)